"digital media" articles

By Brett Sappington and Billy Nayden
What a great coincidence that AT&T’s acquisition of the company that brought us the power struggles of Westeros and Game of Thrones is likely to set off a new era of competition in pay TV.
With a federal judge approving AT&T’s $85 billion buyout of Time Warner late Tuesday afternoon, the courts cleared a path for a number of imminent media deals that will undoubtedly bring substantial change to the media landscape....

Movie theaters have lived a long life, having bolstered the financial health of the film industry for years and entertained millions of viewers. Theaters provide a unique blend of public and private entertainment, allowing us to experience the spectacle of film in our own seat but in a community of viewers. However, despite its position as a venue for the art of film, this unique channel for content distribution is struggling as it seeks a resurgence rather than a slow death....

Speaking from an entertainment focus at CES, nearly everyone I met with talked about being able to provide a single, unified interface for all the video products and services that consumers are using. And when you think about it, it makes complete sense why that is such a big deal. We have reached the point where using two or more video services is becoming the norm rather than the exception to a rule, and because users have to sort through the several different services they use to...

The Apple Event was today, and Apple made a series of interesting announcements about its iPhone lineup. The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus were announced, and the rumored iPhone X was confirmed. These new iPhones offer more powerful processing via Apple's new A11 chip, as well as an Apple-designed GPU. This allows Apple to offer on-device machine learning and computer vision-enabled abilities which enable a number of new use cases.
Apple's machine learning tech enables:
Native...

“Hey, did you watch that popular show last night where the thing happened?”
“No. I haven’t watched it yet. Thanks a lot.”
“Oh… Sorry…”
The penultimate season of HBO’s global hit series Game of Thrones is in the books. While many of the show’s die-hard fans are sure to have watched it through the season finale, coverage in the media suggests otherwise. Media outlets have been careful to mask key plot developments in their headlines and...

Ever since the release of Jaws in June of 1975, summer has been the realm of the multiplex blockbuster. Tentpole action film franchises like Star Wars, Batman, Spider-man, Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones often find themselves in theaters during the summer movie season from May through July. Summer generally brought a lull in television, the demands of weekly programming schedules relegated to low-cost or specialty programming while the cast and crews...

Crunchyroll is partnering with Twitch.tv to offer a 6-day Crunchyroll marathon on the gaming-focused live streaming platform. The marathon started today on July 27, and it will run back-to-back episodes of entire series 24 hours a day for nearly 20 different anime hits. The episodes are free to watch on Twitch.tv, containing ads unless viewers are Twitch Prime subscribers (either purchased separately or as an added benefit of being an Amazon Prime subscriber).
Viewers...

As reported by the Wall Street Journal Sunday and confirmed by Comcast and Charter press releases yesterday, the two cable giants have entered into an agreement to work together as they each enter the highly competitive wireless communications industry. From an operational and competitive standpoint, the partnership makes good sense. While both have extensive Wi-Fi networks, Comcast and Charter are newbies in the cellular world. Thus, any efforts to create greater...